RULA Seminar: “Look upon my beauty!” The Alhambra and the Guided Eye

Landscape architects are taught about the Alhambra as one of the great designs of the world. Their view of the Alhambra treats it as an expression of design and source of inspiration for design over the next millennium.

In contrast, Richard Serrano views this landscape through the lens of historic Arabic documents and literature. With a rich understanding of the culture and history, Serrano will present this familiar, even sacred, landscape through his disciplinarily-distinct perspective.
Bio:
Professor Serrano's recent research projects in Arabic Literature include a compilation and translation of the seventh-century poet Jamil's diwan and a study of the relationship between poetry in Egyptian and Tunisian protest movements and Classical Arabic tropes of complaint. In East Asian Literatures he is conducting research on women and eighteenth-century poetry in China and Korea (which also involves a great deal of translation). Future research projects include a study of the intersection of Chinese and Arab cultures with music, art and literature in Habsburg Vienna; resituating contemporary poetry of the Maghreb in a Mediterranean (rather than a "postcolonial") context, which entails the work of poets from Spain, France, Italy, Egypt, Lebanon and eventually Greece, Turkey, Israel (and perhaps even Albania and Croatia).